International and Area Studies Commons^™

Dedication

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs (2012 - Present)

No abstract provided.

Jlia Editorial Board & Staff

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs (2012 - Present)

No abstract provided.

Customer Satisfaction Index Of Singapore 2020: Q2 Results, Institute Of Service Excellence, Smu

Research Collection Institute of Service Excellence (2007-2024)

The Customer Satisfaction Index of Singapore (CSISG) computes customer satisfaction scores at the national, sector, sub-sector, and company levels. The CSISG serves as a quantitative benchmark of the quality of goods and services produced by the Singapore economy over time and across countries. This is the CSISG’s 14th year of measurement.

Amjambo Africa! (September 2020), Kathreen Harrison

Amjambo Africa!

In This Issue...

Indigo Arts Alliance.....................p.2

publisher’s editorial.....................p.4

registering to vote.......................p.4

French............................................p.5

Swahili...........................................p.6

Somali............................................p.7

School resource officers ..............p.8

U.S.-Canada border.....................p.8

News from Africa.........................p.9

Finance/buying a home.............p.10

Guest columns..............11/14/20/21

World market basket...........p.12/13

Héritier Nosso............................p.15

Community org. News........p.16/17

Kinyarwanda..............................p.18

portuguese .................................p.19

outdoor learning.......................p.23

bus Shelters................................p.23

The “End Of Poverty” Illusion: Global And East Asian Realities In The Covid-19 Pandemic, Mel Gurtov

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

The World Bank’s “International Poverty Line,” a politically driven standard, obscures the reality that, in East Asia as elsewhere, poverty is increasing alongside enormous wealth for the richest ten percent. The COVID-19 pandemic is driving tens of millions more people into poverty in East Asia than would otherwise be the case, challenging all governments to meet the crisis where it most counts: in health care, food, aid to small businesses, and income. For that to happen , however, requires a dramatically different approach to economic globalization by governments and international lending agencies. Two events, the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate …

Comment By John Grayzel, John Grayzel

Comparative Civilizations Review

There is no question that pandemics can shake up a seemingly stable set of circumstances and, in that way, affect history.

J. C. Sharman. Empires Of The Weak: The Real Story Of European Expansion And The Creation Of The New World Order, Niv Horesh

Comparative Civilizations Review

Warfare had undergone many revolutionary changes over the centuries. Hittite chariots, for example, are said to have spread east and south bolstering aristocracies at the dawn of urbanization some three thousand years ago. Then, the quality of swords and armouries infinitely improved, as the infantry steadily took centre stage, and the Iron Age swept across Eurasia and, later on, Africa. The Chinese invented the crossbow as early as the 7th Century BCE, and Hannibal surprised the Romans with elephants few centuries later.

Comment By Michael Andregg, Michael Andregg

Comparative Civilizations Review

We have already determined that global civilization is experiencing a flurry of interrelated crises that challenge many things we hold dear, in extremis, human survival.

Comment By Andrew Targowski, Andrew Targowski

Comparative Civilizations Review

Pandemic 2020, triggered by the coronavirus, reminds us that life on Earth has been evolving for 3.5 billion years from a virus, which is just a deficient bacterium.

Comment By John Berteaux, John Berteaux

Comparative Civilizations Review

In discussions of how the state should react to the current pandemic, one controversial issue has involved whether it should force citizens to wear masks when in public. As a matter of fact, from New Orleans, Louisiana to Turlock, California, and from Aurora, Colorado to San Antonio, Texas, individuals asked to put on a mask have occasionally turned violent.

Comment By Connie Lamb, Connie Lamb

Comparative Civilizations Review

The Coronavirus pandemic put a halt to many normal activities. One of the institutions heavily impacted by the virus is libraries.

Comment By Rosemary Gillett-Karam, Rosemary Gillett-Karam

Comparative Civilizations Review

The Department of Homeland Security, with its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVIS) arms, announced unexpectedly on July 6 of this year that international students studying in the United States at universities and colleges which were converting to all-online instruction because of the pandemic would become immediately ineligible to continue their enrollment in their college or university courses if their own countries had similar programs available.

Political Power Of Iranian Hierocracies, János Jany

Comparative Civilizations Review

The aim of the paper is to demonstrate that the current Iranian regime is no novelty in Iranian history and political thinking, but has two antecedents: the rule of the Sasanians in late Antiquity (3rd–7th centuries) and that of the Safavids (16th–18th centuries) in modern times. After a brief outline of relevant historical events the paper scrutinizes the common features of these three regimes. The comparison includes the analyses of foreign policy, its scope, aim and direction, cultural policy and the relevance of political ideologies, socio-economic policy, religious policy, political structure and mechanisms of decision-making. The results of the comparison …

The Psychology Department, Brandeis University In The 1960s: A Comment On Feigenbaum’S Memoir, David Lester

Comparative Civilizations Review

Kenneth Feigenbaum has written a colorful account of his time as a faculty member of the Department of Psychology at Brandeis University from 1962-1965 and his interactions with Abraham Maslow (Comparative Civilizations Review: No. 82. 63-73, 2020). This view, from the perspective of the graduate students, supplements Feigenbaum’s account.

Response To Prof. Ernest B. Hook’S Comments On “So-Called Euroasianism”, Dimitry Shlapentokh

Comparative Civilizations Review

I was quite pleased by the fact that a professor, a full professor from the prestigious University of California Berkeley, not only read my article, but commented on it. (Comparative Civilizations Review: No. 82. 129, 2020) Indeed, millions of articles are published every year, and the vast majority are absolutely ignored.

Philipp Ammon. Georgia Zwischen Eigenstaatlichkeit Und Russische Okkupation (Georgia Between Nationhood And Russian Occupation), Andrew Andersen

Comparative Civilizations Review

The book provides detailed analysis of political, historical, religious and cultural roots of the ongoing conflict between Russia and Georgia, which started more than 200 years ago in what is now a strategically important area of the world – the South Caucasus. That region, which includes Georgia alongside Armenia and Azerbaijan, serves as a natural corridor through which Western countries can get access to the vital hydrocarbon resources of Central Asia, bypassing Russia. At the same time, after the disintegration of the USSR, the South Caucasus turned into one of the “hot zones” where polar ideologies and economic interests of …

John Vincent Bellezza. The Dawn Of Tibet: The Ancient Civilization On The Roof Of The World, Constance Wilkinson

Comparative Civilizations Review

The Dawn of Tibet: the Ancient Civilization on the Roof of the World by John Vincent Bellezza is a unique work by an intrepid explorer-scholar who, purely from his own inspiration, spent decades doggedly tracking down traces of the prehistoric Zhang Zhung civilization, a Metal Age culture (famed for making iron weapons of war) and a polity that dominated the remote northwestern plateau of Upper Tibet until the 7th century CE.

End Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

The Roman Catholic Church In Poland After The Fall Of Communism, Krystyna Górniak-Kocikowska

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

Had I written a paper about the Roman Catholic Church in Poland after the Fall of Communism in 2019, when Paul Mojzes asked me to (thank you, Paul, for your unceasing encouragement!), the writing would have been so much easier than it is now. Not easy, but easier. At that time, the situation of the Roman Catholic Church in Poland, just like life in Poland in general, seemed relatively stable, much more so than throughout most of Poland’s turbulent history or even during those 30 years since the Fall of Communism. The Church, too, seemed to be on the way …

Changes In The Attitudes Of The Slovak Population Regarding The So-Called Solution To The ‘Jewish Question’ (1938-1945), Ivan Kamenec

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The course of the Holocaust in Slovakia has been comprehensively and reliably reconstructed in both the domestic and foreign historiography. We know about the mechanisms of anti-Semitic policy and their Slovak particularities, as well as of the tragic fate of the 89,000 Slovak Jews of whom about 70,000—approximately two thirds of all the Jews living in the Slovak State in 1939—perished in the Final Solution

Circuits Of Mobile Workers In The 19th-Century Central Balkans, Evguenia Davidova

International & Global Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article compares the geographic and social mobility of two “lesser known” groups of workers: merchants’ assistants and maidservants. By combining labor mobility, class, and gender as categories of analysis, it suggests that such examples of temporary and return migration opened up new economic possibilities while at the same time reinforcing patriarchal order and increasing social inequality. Such transformative social practice is placed within the broader socio-economic and political fabric of the late Ottoman and post-Ottoman Balkans during the “long 19th century.”

William Of Rubruck: Cosmopolitan Curiosity And Restraint In An Age Of Conquest And Mission, Duncan Weaver

Comparative Civilizations Review

William of Rubruck’s account of journeying to Mongolia (1253-55) remained relatively elusive in scholarly and popular discourses. A Franciscan friar, his mission helped tentatively acquaint two (literally/figuratively) distant civilizations, Latin Christendom and the Mongol Empire. We may assess the extent to which a critical reading of Rubruck can propel knowledge of a Christian Eastward mission. Rubruck’s account was found to evince a degree of restraint and cosmopolitan curiosity that not only went against the grain of Christendom’s exceptionalism and expansionism, but also enabled the pursuit of a rudimentary inter-civilizational dialogue.

Pentecostalism In Western Ukraine: Historical Development And Current Theological Challenges, Roman Soloviy

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The purpose of this article is twofold: firstly, to examine the origins and historical development of Christians of the Evangelical Faith (Pentecostals) in Western Ukraine from 1920 until today; secondly, to give an account of current theological problems of Western Ukrainian Pentecostalism and to explore its theological renewal, which began after the Revolution of Dignity (2013-2014). In doing so, the socio-political, ethnic, and religious contexts of the birth of Pentecostalism in Western Ukraine will be studied; these include the living conditions of Ukrainians in the Second Polish Republic, religious situation in Western Ukraine between the First and Second World Wars, …

Book Review: András Máté-Tóth, Freiheit Und Populismus:Verwundete Indentitäten In Ostmitteleuropa, Paul Crego

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

András Máté-Tóth, a professor in the study of religions at the University of Szeged, in Szeged, Hungary, has written an excellent study of the interaction of religion and national identities among the various nation of East Central Europe, called Freiheit und Populismus: Verwundete Indentitäten in Ostmitteleuropa. He draws on a wide range of resources about the national identities of this geographical territory, as well as theoretical works about the developing identities of people around the world. He also draws upon works covering religious identities in relation to ethnic and national identity and discusses religious communities in the area under discussion.

Tax Implications Of Covid-19 In Singapore, Vincent Ooi

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

As taxpayers in Singapore deal with a radically changed business environment due to COVID-19, there is a need to make non-routine decisions quickly. These decisions can have significant tax implications, which will likely manifest themselves later as the economy recovers. It is critical for taxpayers to understand the tax consequences of their decisions, even as they focus on issues of immediate survival. While the majority of the relevant tax principles are not new, the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the need to apply these existing principles to new situations and increased the frequency of certain activities that may have been …

Comment By David Rosner, David Rosner

Comparative Civilizations Review

Human beings need to “make sense” out of the world, but our world is sometimes unintelligible.

Comment By Tseegai Isaac, Tseegai Isaac

Comparative Civilizations Review

Ethiopia is celebrated for its ancient biblical civilization. Its political traditions for centuries blended Old and New Testament tenets, creating templates for daily social and religious life.

Comment By David Wilkinson, David Wilkinson

Comparative Civilizations Review

In his life, Sorokin was variously a starving peasant orphan, an itinerant icon gilder, a self-taught bookworm, a political activist, a six-time political prisoner, an empirical penologist, a quantitative sociologist, a Socialist Revolutionary, a starving intellectual worker, an involuntary passenger on the Ship of Expelled Russian Thinkers, a founding comparative civilizationist, a conservative Christian anarchist, a Tolstoyan believer that “the Kingdom of God is within you,” and an elected write-in candidate for President of the American Sociological Association.

Editor's Note, Joseph Drew

Comparative Civilizations Review

The ferocity of Covid-19 has struck worldwide this year. In the process, all of humanity has been affected. Civilizations and societies, and nations large and small, have responded to the challenge, some with more success than others.

Chogyal Namkhai Norbu. The Light Of Kailash, A History Of Zhang Zhung And Tibet, Constance Wilkinson

Comparative Civilizations Review

The Light of Kailash : A History of Zhang Zhung and Tibet is a three-volume series by the late Chogyal Namkhai Norbu, former professor of Tibetan and Mongolian Language and Literature at the University of Naples L'Orientale. Born in Derge, Tibet, he spent much of his career researching the origins of pre-Buddhist Tibetan culture, finding sources in an ancient civilization, Zhang Zhung1, and an indigenous ritual tradition, Bon2.